Exam 1 Flashcards
Common sense vs folk wisdom
Common sense often constricts itself such as birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract
“The what”
Social psychology is about ….
• learning what people actually think, feel, do in
given situations
“The why”
Why do people do what they do?
• What are the internal and external processes
that influence thoughts, emotions, behavior
Social Psychology
The scientific discipline that attempts to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others
(Gordon Allport)
FIVE FUNDAMENTAL AXIOMS
- ) power of the situation
- ) social influences are pervasive
- ) people construct their own reality
- )interactionist perspective
- )fallibility of intuition
The Research Process
7steps
- Research topic & literature review
- Research question
- Hypothesis
- Design & method selection & preparation
- Data collection
- Data analysis
- Data interpretation
The research process
BiG 5
- The power of random assignment
- The power of manipulations
- The power of control over potential confounding variables
- The power of relative differences between conditions
- The power of causal (vs. correlational) inferences
Random assignment
Each participant is equally likely to end up in each condition of the experiment
• Distributes individual difference variables approximately evenly across conditions
Manipulations
Every participant receives same treatment within each condition
• Between conditions, we know what the only likely difference is: our
manipulation
Control over potential confounding variables
Allows for very similar conditions between conditions (EXCEPT for the manipulation), because the context, atmosphere, temperature, etc. are held constant
Relative differences between condition DVs
Even if some outside variable was influencing participants, it was likely to influence all of them (because we held variables other than the IV constant across conditions)
Causal (vs. correlational) inferences
If we have manipulated a variable, we can have considerable certainty that the IV (the manipulation) caused or influenced the change in the DV
Introspection
We know usually what we do but not why
Self perception
Who I am is determined by what I do
Two-Factor Theory of Emotion: Observe felt arousal → seek explanation for it
Dutton & Aron (1976) bridge experiment : Is this love?
The Looking-Glass Self
We come to see ourselves as others see us
Discrepancies: We internalize how we THINK others appraise us (not necessarily how they actually do)
Self-regulation
Purposefully controlling one’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior
Predicts:
● Stable relationships
● More success
● Less criminality
● Better mental health and longer life.
Walter “Marshmallow” Mischel Study:
Gave 4 yr. olds & marshmallows
Delay of gratification
Self-control = 2 mallows.
Self-control failure = only 1.
On average self-control kids +210 pts. on the SAT!
Classic depletion study
IV easy task vs. difficult task
DV performance on subsequent difficult task
Results – performing a difficult task leads to poor performance because of ego depletion
Ways to increase self-control resources
Rinsing sugar in your mouth - dopamine
Incentives - $, grades
Believing the self-control is NOT a limited resources
Positive Self-Illusions
- Judgment illusions
- Illusions of Control
- Unrealistic Optimism
Judgment Illusions
Unrealistically positive self judgments
Self serving bias - We all have a natural inclination to see ourselves as better than average
Illusions of Control
How much do we control our own fate?
-Entity theorists vs. Incremental theorists
-entity: we are born with relatively fixed abilities
-incremental: skills are learned and thus malleab
Unrealistic optimism
-Good things likely to happen to the self
-Bad things likely to happen to others
Self-Enhancement
we are motivated to maintain high self-esteem
Self-Verification
Tendency to seek confirmation of both positive and negative self-beliefs from others
Self-enhancement vs. Self-verification?
Self-enhancement:
motivated to maintain high self-esteem
Self-verification:
Motivated to seek confirmation of both positive and negative self-beliefs from others
Self monitoring
monitor and adjust behavior to fit current situational demands
Self handicapping
self defeating behavior in order to have a ready excuse in case you perform poorly or fail
Dual Process Model Logic
In most cases, we prefer to use as few cognitive resources as possible.
People are cognitive misers
Both motivation and free cognitive capacity are necessary to engage in deliberative thought.
What determines whether we engage in effortful deliberations?
Motivation
•Humans as “satisficers” (Simon)
•Self-related motives (e.g., self-enhancement)
Capacity
•Constraints on working memory ( 7 +/- 2) •Cognitive “load” / multitasking
•Task difficulty
4 Components of Automatic
Reactions
- Efficient – reactions don’t require much mental capacity or time
- Unintentional – reactions that occur without an explicit desire, goal or intention to have them
- Uncontrollable – reactions that we cannot prevent
- Without Awareness – reactions we may not even be conscious of having
Heuristic
mental shortcuts that reduce complex judgments to simple rules of thumb
Heuristics: Anchoring Effects
tendency to be biased toward the starting value (or anchor) in making quantitative judgments
Heuristics: Stability Effects
tendency for early impressions of an individual not to be overridden by subsequent conflicting information
Availability Heuristic
tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event
False Consensus Effect
tendency to
overestimate how common one’s own attitudes, opinions, and beliefs are in the general population
Salience Bias
activated events will come to seem as if they occur more frequently
Ease of Retrieval
Experienced ease of calling up information influences a judgment
Confirmation Bias
seeking information that supports our beliefs while ignoring disconfirming information
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
process by which expectations about a person or group tend to be fulfilled by that person or group because of how we treat them
